The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  Now that he was King he could find a new home not only for his paintings, but for his richly decorated French furniture, his chandeliers and massive candelabras, his clocks and Sèvres porcelain.

  However, he could not at first decide what kind of palace he wanted. There were many suggestions offered. The architect Sir John Soane had already produced detailed plans for a splendid residence for the new King. Mrs Arbuthnot, wife of the Commissioner for Woods and Forests, Charles Arbuthnot, records that at a house party at Stratfield Saye in October 1825, Colonel Trench MP had shown the Duke of Wellington his own plans for a new building.

  Colonel Trench wants to have a palace in the Park on what is called Buck Vine Hill, and the execution of his plan would cause half Hyde Park to be occupied by buildings, courts and gardens. It is the worst plan of a house I ever saw, and quite colossal, for he proposes a statue gallery 500 feet long, a drawing room 190, and other rooms in proportion. It is the most ridiulous plan I ever saw for, added to it, is the idea of a street 200 feet wide extending from the end of Hyde Park opposite the New Palace to St Paul’s!! The King and the Duke of York are madly eager for this plan; but the former says he supposes his d—d ministers won’t allow it … Colonel Trench has persuaded him that Buckingham House will always be a damp hole unfit for him to live in; and the ministers, in consequence of the King’s determination to have no other place, during the last session obtained money from Parliament, obtained the King’s approval of the plan and immediately set to work to build there for him. All the rest of us laughed at Col. Trench and his plans; we advised him to put his palace in Kensington Gardens and not to touch the ‘lungs of the people of England’, as the newspapers call the parks.2

  However, the King, rejecting all alternative plans, decided to rebuild Buckingham Palace and demolish Carlton House. The Riding School next door was converted into a store for his furniture and possessions.

  The King solved the problem of storing at least some of his vast collection of paintings: he lent 164 in 1826 and a further 185 in 1827 for exhibition in the British Institution in Pall Mall, of which he was the patron. The foreword in the catalogue recorded His Majesty’s ‘desire to interest the public feeling in the advancement of the fine arts’. When Prince Regent he had shown a genuine interest in supporting British artists and took great interest in the proposal for a National Gallery. Ten Corinthian pillars from the front of Carlton House were saved and, according to Clifford Smith, used in the façade of the new National Gallery when it was built in 1838.

  Nash had already given much thought to a new palace and tried to persuade the King to build higher, in line with Pall Mall. He did not like Buckingham House’s northern aspect, and rightly considered it too low and damp. However, the King was adamant. In the presence of Lord Farnborough he warned Nash not

  at his peril ever to advise me to build a Palace. I am too old to build a Palace. If the Public wish to have a Palace, I have no objection to build one, but I must have a pied-à-terre. I do not like Carlton House standing in a street, and moreover I tell him that I will have it at Buckingham House; and if he pulls it down he shall rebuild it in the same place; there are early associations which endear me to the spot.3

  He had had a happy childhood there with Queen Charlotte.

  The idea that George IV would be satisfied with a pied à terre was preposterous. His feet were never wholly on the ground. Even in 1819, before he became King, he had considered rebuilding Buckingham House on a grand scale. But, as he told the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, that would cost around £450,000. The government, however, had refused to allot anything more than £150,000. These were days of distress and riots. So it was not until 12 July 1821 that the King told his Surveyor-General Stephenson ‘to put all plans relating to Buckingham House in the hands of Nash’, and work did not begin until 1825.

  If the new King did not know what he wanted, John Nash did. The new palace should be part of his grand scheme for London. He had already designed Regent’s Park and the great sweeping arc of Regent Street leading from the Park down to Carlton House. Now he was planning to clear away the jumble of little streets round the King’s Mews on the site of the present Trafalgar Square and create an open space where the Battle of Trafalgar could be commemorated, reveal the church of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, unite the roads from Whitehall, the Mall and the Strand, and link with the great road to Regent’s Park. Buckingham Palace would then be the climax of the long avenue, the Mall. He also had plans for a West Strand development, but by this time he was fully engaged in his work on the palace, so the building with the round turrets that he designed, now the bank of Coutts & Co., was built by other architects. In many respects his vision was realized: Trafalgar Square was created and Regent Street and Regent’s Park remain an elegant monument to him. The King’s Mews was removed to the Grosvenor Place end of the palace garden.

  In June 1825 a bill was passed in the House of Commons authorizing work to begin on the ‘repair and improvement of Buckingham House’ with a grant of £200,000.

  On 23 January 1826 The Times reported:

  The new palace is to be called ‘The King’s Palace in St James’s Park’. A large artificial mound has been raised near the lower end of Grosvenor Place to hide the stables, behind it a fish pond will be constructed. The centre will remain as a parallelogram, from each side of which a circular range of buildings will end in pavilions.

  The entire pile will be of immense magnitude.

  All the principal and state apartments will face west.4

  This is one of the earliest references to the ‘Palace’.

  In May 1826 The Times reported that, on the advice of his doctors, His Majesty was not to return to Brighton and that the Pavilion was to be stripped inside and out; some items were to be used at Buckingham Palace. The truth was that the King was no longer the Prince Charming of his youth, and he had grown so immensely fat that he was unwilling to be seen in public. The house and garden at the end of the Mall would be a retreat, a ‘rus in urbe’, again. But the retreat was to become an ‘immense pile’, thanks to the co-operation of a king who could not rid himself of the folie de grandeur, and an architect who was only too ready to oblige him.

  ‘Nash, the state rooms you have made me are so handsome

  that I think I shall hold my courts there’

  It is time to take a closer look at John Nash, the architect mainly responsible for the Palace we see today, although there would be major alterations and additions in the reigns of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. It is important to remember that in 1825 Nash was seventy-three and was still an extremely busy architect, the Palace being only one of many projects in which he was concerned.

  His early life is obscure, but it appears that he was born in Lambeth of Welsh parents in 1752. His father and cousins were millwrights and engineers with relations still working in Wales. Apparently his father was sufficiently prosperous to take a house in Spring Gardens, near Charing Cross, where he died when Nash was seven years old. Their neighbour Robert Taylor was one of the most successful architects of the day and may have taken an interest in the bright little boy. Certainly he took him as an assistant, possibly in 1766 or 1767; and with him he would have served a seven years’ apprenticeship. It is a pity we know so little of Nash’s years with Taylor, for his influence was to remain with him all his life. Robert Taylor began in his father’s trade as a mason and sculptor, studied in Rome and on his return found wealthy patrons in the city. He switched early from sculpture to architecture and became famous for his solid classical buildings, in town and country. He became architect to the Bank of England, received a knighthood and made a fortune, which he left for the teaching of foreign languages at the University of Oxford. This eventually resulted in the foundation of the Taylorian Institute. In Taylor’s office the young Nash had an excellent grounding in the principles of classical architecture, and the energy which drove him all his life would have been harnessed and disciplined by a master who worked ha
rd and demanded accuracy.

  It is said that Nash was ‘a wild irregular youth’ and his biographer, William Porden, records that he drove Taylor into a frenzy, upon which Taylor would ‘pinch John’s ears and perform some sort of jigs with cries of “harum scarum’”. The qualities that marked his later work were obviously present as a boy – the talent and the energy which on one occasion drove him to stay up all night to complete a job which his colleagues said could not be done. Above all, if Robert Taylor could have looked down in after life at his pupil’s work for the ‘Palace in the Park’ he would have shaken the walls of heaven with his ‘harum scarum’.

  There are various and differing accounts of the next stage of Nash’s life, but some facts seem to be established. According to Porden, after ‘the term of his articles expired’ Nash retired to a small country estate, where he led the life of ‘a gentleman keeping the best company of Bon Vivants’. In short, this was said to be a period of ‘harum scarum’. In April 1775 Nash married Elizabeth Kerr, a surgeon’s daughter, by whom he had a son, baptized on 10 June 1776; and, it would appear, they lived in Lambeth.

  His first building ventures – speculative building in Bloomsbury Square – set a pattern he would follow with the same mixture of success and failure in Regent Street and Carlton Gardens. The stucco for his buildings was supplied by the firm of Robert, James & William Adam, who reappear in the history of Buckingham Palace later on. He lived in one of the houses and moved on to Great Russell Street. In 1782 he left his wife for a Welsh lady, became involved in a court case, and, in 1783, became bankrupt, describing himself as ‘John Nash, Carpenter, Dealer and Chapman’. He retreated to Wales and gradually established himself as an architect responsible, among other things, for Carmarthen Gaol. From then onwards he pursued an uneven course upwards, raising classical buildings and experimenting with iron work in construction. In 1795 the graceful iron bridge he built at Stratford-on-Teme collapsed.

  Attracted by his lively personality and intelligence, the Prince drew him into his circle. He began to rely on Nash, not only as his architectural surveyor but also as a political supporter, intelligent enough to be sent on delicate missions to Westminster. Almost his first action as Regent was to set in motion again work on the Brighton Pavilion and when James Wyatt, his Surveyor-General, died in September 1813, he appointed Nash as Deputy Surveyor. For the next two years Nash concentrated on his work for Carlton House and London. For the peace celebrations of 1814 he was commissioned to build a fantastic pagoda over a bridge in St James’s Park. It was brilliant but, like his bridge, was doomed: it caught fire and collapsed.

  From 1815 to 1823 Nash was in charge of the Brighton Pavilion, a monster of a building that changed its shape as the Regent became possessed by a new fantasy. The cost was prodigious, paid for, supposedly, out of the Regent’s Privy Purse. By 4 May 1820 the estimates totalled £134,609 16s. 5d. But Nash exceeded these by £11,109. There were also constructional problems, which sometimes occurred in Nash’s buildings: the roof of the Pavilion, covered in his experimental ‘Delhi Mastic’, leaked. However, it was repaired and by 1823 the Brighton Pavilion, in all its oriental mad glory, was finished. Many mocked, but its sheer exuberance would amaze generations of visitors to come. Typically, George IV – as he now was – lost interest and he rarely visited the Pavilion after 1823.

  In the first years of his reign he had other things on his mind. His estranged wife, Queen Caroline, returned to England, determined to attend the Coronation and take her place as Queen. The King’s enemies welcomed her, and the mobs cheered her and booed the King, whose extravagance and self-indulgence made him unpopular. Queen Caroline’s eccentric career ended in tragedy. Barred from Westminster Abbey on the day of George IV’s Coronation, 19 July 1821, she returned home in deep distress, was taken ill on 30 July and died on the night of 7 August 1821.

  The King now turned his attention to the deserted Queen’s House. When in 1821 Nash was commissioned by the King to ‘repair’ the Queen’s House Nash was fully extended. He was getting old, but he had not lost his phenomenal energy. He led the life of a hospitable country gentleman at the castle he built at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, where in 1817 the Prince Regent visited him. He was described by one of his guests, Mrs Arbuthnot, as ‘a very clever, odd, amusing man … with a face like a monkey’s but civil and good humoured to the greatest degree’.5 John Nash certainly knew how to charm the ladies.

  The Queen’s House was in fact in the area allotted to one of the King’s other architects, Sir John Soane, who was at this time building a new entrance to the House of Lords but expected to be the architect for the new Buckingham House. Nash’s amusing and conciliating letter of 18 September 1822 is typical of a man whose gift for laughing at himself could disarm opponents.

  … it occurred to me that our appointments are perfectly constitutional, I the King, you the Lords, and your Friend Smirke [Sir Robert Smirke, the third of the King’s architects], the Commons, and the blood instantly rushed to my face seeing or fancying that you wanted to dethrone me. It then struck me that you wanted to be both King and Lords and in fancy I heard you cry out – ‘Off with his head, so much for Buckingham’, and I sighed ‘why should he so long for my empty chair when a few years would give him that without offence which has occasioned in him so offensive an act,’ for I am old, but feeling my head on my shoulders I marched off to Buckingham House.

  He concluded:

  … I have your figure now before my eyes, a thick black shadow standing on the foundation walls of the new arcade … Oh … that some friend could describe my thick, squat dwarf figure, with round head, snub nose and little eyes in such an act of contemplation, but I must be shot flying.6

  He addressed it to ‘J Soane Esq. Architect to the whole Peerage of England’.

  In May 1825 readers of The Times were informed:

  Buckingham House is to be converted into a palace, for the residence of the King. The centre building will ostensibly remain, but the interior of it will be entirely renovated. Two magnificent and tasteful wings, which have been projected by His Majesty himself, upon a very large scale will be added to the centre. The domestic offices, suited to the luxury of these times, and replete with every convenience, will be concealed from the public eye by an ingenious artifice. The workmen have already commenced their labours; the whole will be finished in 18 months.7

  In June The Times reported again:

  In consequence of the extensive alterations that are [being made] in this palace there are nearly 400 artisans of every description at work on the premises, amongst whom there are no fewer than 120 carpenters. These men are satisfied with the usual pay of 5 shillings a day, and accordingly they have given offence to their fellow-workmen who have struck for an increase. On Tuesday a number of these non-contents surrounded the palace, and threatened the men unless they left their work. They were provided with sticks, and one who was armed with a sword flourished it about in a menacing manner. Finding they could not prevail upon the men to quit their work, they entered the building, where they repeated their threats to the workmen … Mr Firth the superintendent had to call in a party of the Coldstream Guards to force them to leave.8

  In June 1825 the work was proceeding. Nash appointed an old friend, William Nixon, as general Clerk of the Works, with three clerks under him, each responsible for one third of the work, to be carried out at the same time. The Treasury obligingly agreed his estimate of £200,000 for ‘repairs’ – before it knew what it was getting. Nash had still not presented his complete estimate, nor had he finished the plans. Parliament was taking him on trust, as it later learned to its cost.

  The problems that were to concern future monarchs had their roots at the beginning of the rebuilding of the Palace. The trouble was that the King and his architect were two old men in a hurry. In 1825, the King’s health was poor; he knew he had not many years ahead and he still did not know what he wanted. Nash had not the time, nor, for that matter, the inclination to wo
rk out careful plans.

  But the fatal flaw in the construction was that the King could never decide the purpose of the Palace. Though at first he had thought of it as a pied à terre, when he saw how splendid Nash’s rooms were becoming, he changed his mind. ‘Nash,’ he cried, ‘the state rooms you have made me are so handsome that I think I shall hold my courts there.’ Nash complained that the original plan had been to build a residence, and there were no more rooms planned for a queen nor offices for the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Steward. The King replied, ‘You know nothing about the matter; it will make an excellent palace, and Lord St Helens and myself have arranged the use of several apartments.’9 They could meet the cost by pulling down St James’s Palace, which he disliked. Instead, he took the decision to raze Carlton House and build mansions on the site. Being so near the Palace they could be let at enormous profit, or so he claimed.

  As the Palace grew grander, the King saw it as a great monument to the victors of Trafalgar and Waterloo. In this Lord Farnborough encouraged him. He had been in Paris as an official during the peace negotiations and was impressed by the nobility of the French state buildings, the elegance of the work of French architects and Napoleon’s arch in the Tuileries. Nash was delighted to design a great Marble Arch for the front courtyard, a Roman victory arch which would dominate the vista from the end of the Mall. On 4 September 1826 The Literary Gazette described the plans with awe: ‘This is a portico of two orders of architecture, the lower is Doric copied from the Temple of Theseus at Athens. The upper is Corinthian like the Pantheon in Rome.’10 Originally Nash had planned it to be, like the exterior of the Palace, made of Bath stone, but, carried away by enthusiasm, sent to Italy for the finest Carrara marble, to be chosen by his agent, Joseph Browne. It came by sea, was landed at Pimlico on the Thames and hauled to the Palace in great wagons.